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This year's winner of the prestigious Mary Fran Myer's Gender and Disaster Award is Dr. Mahbuba Nasreen (http://www.gdnonline.org/index.php). She is the current Director of the Institute of Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies, University of Dhaka and a Steering Committee member of Duryog Nivaran.

Dr. Mahbuba Nasreen has given a lot of time and energy to work at high level international meetings on policy relating to gender and disaster response and disaster risk reduction. She has had a long and distinguished career as a researcher and consultant in the fields of gender and development and gender and disaster, including food security, reproductive health, violence against women and climate change. She has also participated in networking at an international level in Bangladesh delegations and as a member of the Women Major Group of UNISDR. Her advocacy of women as those involved in resilient responses to disaster rather than merely victims has been consistent and effective. She is both a distinguished academic and a representative of Bangladesh, a country with significant challenges that constantly confronts disasters.

The Mary Fran Myers Award, established in 2002 by the Gender and Disaster Network, recognizes that vulnerability to disasters and mass emergencies is influenced by social, cultural, and economic structures that marginalize women and girls. Research and practice that reduces women’s and girls’ loss of life, injuries, and property can make a difference. The goal of the Gender and Disaster Network is to promote and encourage such research and practice.

The Mary Fran Myers Award was so-named in order to recognize the efforts of Mary Fran Myers, who was Co-Director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder until her untimely death in 20014, for her sustained efforts to launch a worldwide network among disaster professionals, for advancing women’s careers and for promoting research on gender issues in disaster research in emergency management and higher education.

Another long standing member of Duryog Nivaran, Madhavi Malalgoda Ariyabandu also won this award in 2004 (http://www.gdnonline.org/mfm_award_2004.php). We at Duryog Nivaran are proud of the two of them, and will continue to take a lead in working towards gender inclusion in DRR.

The Sendai Seven campaign is an advocacy initiative to encourage implementation over the next seven years of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which was adopted by UN Member States in 2015 in the northern Japanese city after which it was named, and consists of seven targets and four priorities for action that aim for the substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health and in the economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets of persons, businesses, communities and countries.

India's New Disaster Management Plan: A Sub-National View for Asia

Government of India has come up with National Disaster Plan that not only address needs of Indan citizens but also is first in alignment with Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The plan offers a sub-national view that is useful for Asia.